


Choking on Almosts

by ratherbeblue (orphan_account)



Series: Almost/Always [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Second Person, Prose Poem, Richie Tozier-centric, stan is alive okay guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 19:49:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ratherbeblue
Summary: As soon as your eyes meet you’re thirteen again.But that’s not quite right.You are thirteen, but you’re also six. You’re six and you’re thirteen and you’re eighteen and you’re forty.You are every age and every moment that you’ve known and loved the man in front of you.





	Choking on Almosts

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a big old mess of stream of consciousness nonsense. Hope you like it!

As soon as your eyes meet you’re thirteen again.

But that’s not quite right.

You are thirteen, but you’re also six. You’re six and you’re thirteen and you’re eighteen and you’re forty.

You are every age and every moment that you’ve known and loved the man in front of you.

6.

You’re six and you’re nervous, well that’s not true. You’re actually very very not nervous because it is your first day of school and your friend Bill is already nervous and you have to be not nervous for him.

So you’re not nervous.

You’re actually very relieved to be there with everyone.

You don’t know anyone but Bill and Bill is clinging to your side until the teachers pull you apart, but he still won’t speak.

So you speak loud enough for the two of you.

You can hear a voice, this time it’s your mother’s, exasperated, _ behave, Richie _.

But she’s not actually here, and she can’t actually tell you that.

So you keep being loud and you’re glad you do because it’s the first thing he says to you.

_ You’re very loud, you know _

His name is Eddie and he likes cars. You know this because the teacher made him tell the whole class.

At recess he turns around to face you to tell you this and you actually look at his face.

He has brown eyes and freckles.

You want to count the freckles on his nose like you count the pebbles on the beach, with devoted, singular attention that makes your mother sigh and father’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion. You want to spend the whole day counting and organizing and quantifying and making up songs about them that you will sing too loudly and without warning. You want to do all of that and scream, the way you do at the beach, if anyone dares to interrupt. But you’re 6 now and _ you can’t do that anymore, Richie. _Your mother’s voice reminds you.

So instead you kick sand into his bright white shoes, which, for some reason, makes him scream instead.

It’s not what you wanted, you didn’t want him mad and screaming, making teachers run over and other kids stare. But it’s what you did.

You’re not sure what you wanted.

13.I

You’re thirteen and you are annoyed. 

But that’s not really true.

You look annoyed, you’re acting annoyed, and anyone who saw you would probably nod their head sagely and say, wow that kid really is annoyed.

But you’re not. You can’t be. Not when it’s Eddie who should be annoying you. He’s going on and on about something that might have to do with the cleanliness of public water fountains or might have to do with the comic book he threw to the side a few minutes ago. 

You’re not really sure because while he talks he’s moving his arms wildly. Elbows catching against your stomach and hands slapping at your arms while you both lounge on his bed. His arms are easier to pay attention to than his words right now.

You realize suddenly, while watching his arms, that you are alone. There’s no one to look annoyed for and so you stop. Eddie doesn’t notice.

Eddie is all wrinkled brow and scrunched up nose and mouth moving a mile a minute and you love him.

Wait.

No. 

A voice in the back of your head. 

_ Beep beep, Richie. _

It’s one of your friends, the Losers’ voices, and you only ever smile when one of them says beep beep, Richie. Because beep beep reminds you of cars, and cars reminds you of Eddie, and Eddie-

But this doesn’t make you smile, it makes your heart drop cold and suddenly in your chest, like a sinking stone, like a pebble on the beach, too big to skip.

You look around the room to distract yourself.

You find something.

There’s a snowglobe on Eddie’s dresser. Well, that’s not really true because it’s not a globe and there’s no snow in it. 

What it is is a squashed dome shape full of blue viscous liquid and seashells and rocks that remind you of the box of nerds candy you always have to get when you go to the movies. It’s not a snowglobe, but all the parts inside move around when you shake them so it’s close enough, even if you could swear the cartoon dolphins inside are judging you when you think that.

You’ve always kind of wanted to crack it open and drink it just to see if it tastes like half melted blue raspberry icee because that’s what it looks like. More than that though you kind of want it in your house so you can live your whole life thinking about cracking it open and getting a taste even though you know you never really would.

Unless Eddie dared you to.

But he doesn’t. He just kind of looks at you, looks where you’re looking, and calls you a fucking weirdo. 

He pushes you with his arms.

13.II

When you’re older, thirteen and a half, you realize what it actually is.

And it’s not love, just attention.

Attention that you want to pay him every second of every day, and because that’s impossible you’ll settle for half if only he’ll pay you attention the rest of the time.

And you spend a lot of time in English thinking about writing Richie Kasprak over and over and over but you know you can’t, not even once, not even if it’s written on a scrap of tinder and immediately set a flame. You’re somehow stuck on the image of smoke rising in the shape of your shame and you sit further away from the campfire than you ever would have before.

One day you say something you thought was normal about Eddie and your mom gives you a sad smile. 

You don’t know what it means.

But you have an idea.

And if your mom knows.

And this clown knows.

And you know.

You’re not going to make it out of here alive.

Maybe you don’t want attention after all.

18.

You’re eighteen and you are terrified. 

Or you’re heartbroken.

You could very well be both but the first shouldn’t be possible...

_ The clown is dead so the fear should be too, right? _

_ Right? _

And the second it too real for you to want to acknowledge. 

But you have to because Eddie is standing in front of you.

He’s standing in front of you and you’re standing on the kissing bridge and you bite your tongue on bad jokes and worse truths to keep from putting your cards down in front of him.

He’s telling you he’s leaving. That his mom is packing the house now and they won’t be here tomorrow.

It’s cruel and unusual.

Six months before he graduates.

Six months before you were supposed to graduate with him.

Six months before you were supposed to graduate together.

And you thought, sometimes, in the back of your mind, six months before you were going to tell him.

But there won’t be a time six months from now with you and him. Not anymore.

He’s not exactly holding back tears and you don’t know if that makes it better or worse on your aching heart.

Finally, he’s turning away.

He’s _ walking away. _

There’s something in you screaming, frantic and desperate. _ Stop. Him. Anyway you can think of just make him stop and keep him from leaving. _

_ Break his arm or steal his keys. Start screaming, like you do, at the beach. Run to his house and light it on fire. Wonder if his mother is inside, decide you don’t care. Push him over the bridge. Jump after him and cushion the fall. Lock him up in your room. You can feed him the leftover birthday cake you’ve been saving. Hold his shoulders so tight the bones will crumble. Tell him the only way to fix it is if he stays. Rip his heart out, hot and bleeding, grasp it even tighter than his shoulder. Promise to give it back if he promises not to run away with it. Hold his hand that tight and never let go. Kiss him. Tell. Him. _

_ Tell. _

_ Him. _

_ Now. _

You don’t.

You can’t.

The part of your brain that you can’t shut off even when you really really need to like right now starts up with the tinny and jaunty first notes of that stupid song by _ The Exciters _. 

_ I know _

_ Something _

_ About love _

You really wish you could shut that off right now.

40.

You’re forty and you’re not sure what’s real and what isn’t anymore. The last 24 hours of your life has felt more real than the last 24 years and that should scare you, should make you question your sanity and make you want to scream.

But it doesn’t. 

Because you’re forty but you’re surrounded by the only people who have ever made you feel eternal, ageless, infinite and loved.

Beverly and Ben and Bill and Mike and Stan and Eddie…

Seeing all of them now makes you simultaneously ache and sigh in relief. 

You want to go back to all the times when you were too loud and too cold. You wish you had been soft and sweet instead, wish you had the brain power and courage to know that love is never bad, never scary. Not with them.

You want to be eight and hold Bill’s hand when he gets scared instead of punching him in the shoulder and telling him to _ get it together sargent _. 

You want to be ten and hold Stan close, feel the tears over the dying baby bird he tried to save hot and wet against your neck. 

You want to be thirteen and build a house for Bev to live in in your backyard so she can’t go anywhere, never again, not now that you just got her back.

You want to be sixteen and hook your legs over Ben and Mike so they can never leave the spot on your couch, you’ll have to hand feed them popcorn from the bowl until you die but it will be worth it.

You want to be eighteen and kiss Eddie.

You want to go back to the moment on that bridge and scream when he tries to turn away. 

Scream and jump on the rotted wood fence, give him a heart attack and show him the spot where you couldn’t help but carve out a physical symbol of what you felt into the world

But you can’t.

Because you’re forty now.

What you can do is sit at a table and eat with your friends, spend way too many hours there, talk until you give yourself a headache, laugh until your throat is raw.

You’re forty, but you’ll soon be forty-one and you hope, against all else, that when you are, you can say you’ve done all the things you didn’t do right the first time.


End file.
